



























 

Feldenkrais Research Journal​  • ​volume 5​  (2016) 
 
Hypothesis and Theory 
 
 

'crossing/weaving': 
somatic interventions in choreographic practices 

 
Thomas Kampe 
PhD; Senior Lecturer in Acting Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Bath Spa University 

Abstract 
This article aims to articulate how collaborative choreographic processes can be informed through somatic 
educational practices. Focusing on the Feldenkrais Method​® ​(FM), the author elucidates how this 
trans-disciplinary dialogue offers a bio-psycho-social model of critical artistic inquiry. By leaning on 
choreographic research ‘Body/Soma/Self’ and artistic play undertaken between 2004 and 2011, the essay 
gives an insight into the development of FM-informed performance-making practices. The author discusses 
creative process development from a practitioner perspective while offering contextual debate with reference 
to the fields of ‘Release’ (O’Donnell 2010) and ‘Social Choreography’ (Hewitt 2005; Klien 2009). By placing 
FM in the context of performance-making, this article aims to make a distinct contribution to the emerging 
field of ‘somatic-informed’ choreographic practices (Brown 2011). The author explicates how 
Feldenkrais-informed interventions offer the development of preparatory processes, kinaesthetic tuning 
scores, choreographic vocabulary development and choreographic structuring strategies. The transfer of the 
Feldenkrais Method into performance-making—a process-of-enquiry within a process-of-enquiry—is 
discussed as a complex system involving a large number of interacting agents, allowing for conditions of 
uncertainty, ambiguity, and emergent nonlinear causalities while offering an empowering corporeal tool for 
process-participants. 

The essay also discusses how the Feldenkrais Method offers micro-choreographic processes to offer 
creative modalities of self-inquiry through the combination of application of de-familiarisation devices, logic in 
compositional structuring of lessons, and the use of touch and verbal instruction. The article indicates how 
the use of FM as an intersubjective tool for choreographic intervention can support shared decision-making 
processes. Within such context, the role of the choreographer is understood as facilitator of conditions for 
co-creation and an ‘embodied choreographic questioning’ (Kampe 2013), which supports alternatives to the 
‘myth of the lone genius of the artist’ (Montuori 2011) as a contemporary mode of choreographic enquiry and 
production. 

Keywords 
somatic practices, choreographic practice, Release Technique, collaborative arts practice, social 
choreography, Feldenkrais Method 

  

 
Published by the International ​Feldenkrais​ ®​ Federation (IFF) ​http://feldenkrais-method.org 
Available online at ​http://iffresearchjournal.org/volume/5/kampe 
 

 
 

http://feldenkrais-method.org/
http://iffresearchjournal.org/volume/5/kampe


 

Copyright ©:​ The copyright for this paper remains with the author(s). 

Please cite:​ (First published in the) ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​ ;​ ​ 2016. 

Service marks:​ The terms Feldenkrais​®​, Feldenkrais Method​®​, Awareness Through Movement​®​, ATM​®​, 
Functional Integration​®​, and FI​® ​are service marked terms of the International ​Feldenkrais​ ®​ Federation (IFF) 
and Feldenkrais professional guilds and associations in many countries. In keeping with academic 
conventions, they will not be service marked in the entire text as may be required in nonacademic use, but 
only for the first and most prominent use of the terms. In recognition that these phrases are formal terms 
referring to specific practices within the Method, and to the Method as a whole, capitalization of all the words 
in each term has been retained.  

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 2
 



 

Hypothesis and Theory 
 
 

'crossing/weaving': 
somatic interventions in choreographic practices 

 
Thomas Kampe 
PhD; Senior Lecturer in Acting Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Bath Spa University 

 
This essay aims to expose how collaborative choreographic processes can be informed through 
somatic educational practices. Focusing on the Feldenkrais Method​®​, a key 20​th​ century system 
of somatic movement education, this essay elucidates how this trans-disciplinary dialogue offers 
a bio-psycho-social model of artistic inquiry. While there is a fair amount of literature on the 
application of Feldenkrais Method​ ​ within dance education and training (Fortin, Vieyra, and 
Tremblay 2009; Fortin, Long, and Lord 2002; Long 2002), little has been written about its 
application in choreographic contexts (Kampe 2010; Münker 2010). More so, it is the 
non-goal-oriented and subjective orientation of the Feldenkrais Method, concerned with the 
recognition of the emergent and malleable human being in ‘co-dependent interaction with the 
outer world’ (Reese 1985), that aligns the aims of this essay with an increasing trend in dance 
scholarship concerned with the study of the construction, performance, and analysis of 
embodied processes within choreographic culture . Susan Melrose suggests that, rather than 1

analysing product, dance scholars ‘should be enquiring about the making of work’ (2008)​. 
Dance-maker Emilyn Claid argues further that, within collaborative performing arts contexts, ‘its 
processes, not its products, have the power to shift cultural practice’ (2006:124).​ ​ In line with this 
position, the focus of the performative projects discussed in this essay has been on the probing 
of innovative processes of performance-making and their relationship to emerging product and 
agency of the participant. I aim to articulate and disseminate through writing how 
somatic-informed processes and participants’ responses form parts of emancipatory and 
collaborative dance-making practices that rely on organic feedback loops between 
choreographic facilitators and performers. 

By leaning on my choreographic research project ​Body/Soma/Self, ​ undertaken between 2004 
and 2010, this essay gives an insight into the use of Feldenkrais Method-informed processes to 
facilitate performance-making practices. By drawing on the educational practices of physicist 
Moshe Feldenkrais (1904–1984), this choreographic research project aimed to extend the 
boundaries of choreographic processing towards a trans-disciplinary performance practice that 

1 I presented the main ideas of this essay as an academic paper at the symposium ‘Performing Process – 
Sharing Practice’ at the Centre for Dance Research (CeDARE) of Coventry University, UK on June 6, 2014. 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 3
 



 

makes a distinct contribution to the emerging field of ‘somatic-informed’ choreographic practices 
‘that recognize the emergent dancing subject as a feature of the work’ (Brown 2011:71).  

In this essay, I examine how Feldenkrais-informed somatic interventions can serve as 
preparatory processes and ​kinaesthetic-tuning scores ​ and can aid choreographic vocabulary 
development and structuring strategies through corporeal modes of interaction with the social 
world. I strive to illuminate how a choreographic wrestling with limitations inherent in the 
Feldenkrais Method, mainly in its introspective slow attending, serves as starting point for a 
‘testing of the extreme’ (Rywerant 2001) that uses modes of disorientation as a choreographic 
stance. I propose that Feldenkrais-informed choreographic practices foster a complicit ‘somatic 
authority’ (Green 2001) by supporting shared decision-making processes through an underlying 
‘embodied choreographic questioning’ (Kampe 2014). Feldenkrais’ autopoietic model of a 
person as an environmentally embedded and emergent social organism, and his non-corrective 
and anti-totalitarian stance towards embodied questioning as a ‘principle of no principles’ 
(1981), are discussed in performance-making contexts as dynamic systems processes that 
allow for enquiry and communication. I examine the uses of verbal instruction, questioning, and 
non-corrective touch interactions inherent in the Feldenkrais Method as emancipatory 
technologies within creative processes. The essay draws on research participant feedback, 
discusses choreographic process development from a practitioner perspective, and offers a 
contextual debate by drawing on the process-oriented writings of choreographic pioneer Mary 
O’Donnell and more recent discussions on the emancipatory dimensions of choreographic 
process inquiry (Clarke in DeLahunta et al. 2011; Klein 2011; Klien 2009; Martin 2009). 

Choreographic process, agency and world-making 

‘​ Perhaps art as such will have no objects.’ (Marcuse 2007:111) 

Emerging from mid-twentieth century US and European dance cultures, there has been a trend 
in choreographic practice and research that privileges the inquiry into the process-based nature 
of choreographic practices over notions of product and spectacle. Such a paradigm shift aimed 
to challenge modes of participation within dance creation and reception processes. In the US, 
departing mainly from the non-determinist work of Merce Cunningham, the task-based 
choreographies of the Judson Dance Theatre, and the improvisational dance-theatre 
experiments of West Coast dance-pioneer Anna Halprin, a trend towards process-based 
practice emerged where participation in and witnessing of the creation process form part of the 
aesthetics of the emerging artistic product. This has manifested in the improvisational 
performances of ​Grand Union​  (1970–1976), the collective formed by members of The Judson 
Dance Theatre, and the emergence of Contact Improvisation through the work of Steve Paxton 
(1972), but also in a growing interest in ​Open Form Composition​  as a choreographic modality, 
which, according to US dance-maker Mary O’Donnell, could serve as a vessel for a ‘new 
aesthetic, based in actual, real-gestural and process-based works’ (O’Donnell 2010:8). 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 4
 



 

O’Donnell, who influenced a generation of current European dance-makers though her 
directorial work at The School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam (between 
1987–89) and the European Dance Development Centre (EDDC) in Arnhem and Düsseldorf 
(between 1989–2001), had participated in the first Contact Improvisation showings in the Weber 
Gallery in​ ​1972.​ ​Inspired by the process-based ​open form​  practices developed by composer 
Earle Brown in the 1950s, she developed her choreographic practices in the US between the 
late 1960s and early 1970s with her company (Tropical Fruit Company) before moving to 
Europe in 1973.​ ​O’Donnell discusses her interest in developing task-based choreographic 
strategies which would enhance a non-determinism and fluidity in form, while emphasising the 
potential for the integration of the dancers’ capacity for choice-making within choreographic 
devising and performance processes: 

‘​Open Form’​  to me then meant ‘sequenced, (in the sense of ordered in time), 
process-based’ forms where choice-making of dancers was based on their own 
intuition, judgment, and abilities. (O’Donnell 2010:7) 

O’Donnell’s work was seminal for the development of UK ​New Dance​ , initially through her work 
at Dartington College of Arts in the UK between 1974 and 1987, where she was instrumental in 
re-visioning the practice and study of dance as a critical process in which questions of personal 
and societal relevance became questions of choreographic interrogation. She further 
disseminated an ethos toward process-based making and performance through her practice 
and theorization of the emerging approach to dance development she termed ​Release​ , ‘an 
extended scientific and philosophical inquiry’ and vessel for creative transformation (2010:4). 
Her commitment to the dissemination of Contact Improvisation in collaboration with pioneer 
practitioners such as Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark-Smith, Daniel Lepkov, and Lisa Nelson and 
her collaboration with members of the X6 Collective, was instrumental in forging the UK ​New 
Dance​  idiom as, to quote dance-maker Emilyn Claid, ‘a practice of liberation’ (2006:131), and 
her work influenced numerous emerging dance artists of the period. 

O’Donnell articulates her vision of dance as a trans-disciplinary ‘platform for the exploration of 
societal ethics, with the training and management of individual responsibility and freedom being 
the basis’ (2010:12). Such reasoning, where the critical application of choreographic processes 
is understood as emancipatory practice towards a democratisation of the dance-making culture, 
echoes current trans-disciplinary tendencies in dance scholarship towards ​Social Choreography 
(Hewitt 2005, Klein and Noeth 2011, Monni 2010), which aims ‘to open the disciplines of 
choreography and dance to other fields of human knowledge production’ (Klien 2009:5), and my 
own practice-led research that this chapter discusses. Dance sociologists Gabriele Klein (2011) 
and the late Randy Martin (2009) and choreographer Michael Klien (2009) argue that a main 
cultural contribution of dance practice lies within the development of new embodied models of 
social governance. Gabriele Klein and Sandra Noeth (2011) contend that: 

dance reveals its effectivity not in the representation of existing structures 
and systems, but unfolds its potentiality precisely in the offering of 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 5
 



 

alternatives, […] developed with the help of the body and through the 
organization of movement. (2011:9) 

These authors propose a scholarship concerned with inquiring ‘how dance creates “world” as a 
medium bound to the body’ (2011:9). Developing a capacity of world-making or self-creation 
through reflective embodied practices is at the heart of the Feldenkrais Method, which, I 
suggest, uses choreographic processes to empower the learner for autonomous choice-making 
and new ways of interacting with the world.  

The Feldenkrais Method: Embodiment and choreographic becoming 

The Feldenkrais Method was developed by Judoka and physicist Moshe Feldenkrais, DSc 
(1904–1984), between the 1940s and 1980s, as ‘an approach to working with people, which 
expands their repertoire of movements, enhances awareness, improves function and enables 
people to express themselves more fully’ (International Feldenkrais Federation 1994). It is 
applied within contexts of rehabilitation, sports, and increasingly within the performing arts, and 
forms part of the widening field of ​Somatics​ , posited by Thomas Hanna as ‘the art and science 
of the inner relational process between awareness, biological function, and environment, all 
three factors being understood as a synergetic whole’ (1985:1). Feldenkrais developed his work 
in response to Freud and Pavlov, in dialogue with leading twentieth-century body-learning 
pioneers and systems-scientists. His work, which places learning at the heart of the human 
condition, is recognised within current research on ​neuroplasticity​  (Merzenich 2013; Doidge 
2015), and ​enactive cognition ​ (Varela 1995, Noë 2009). 

The Feldenkrais Method makes use of two interrelated approaches, Awareness Through 
Movement​®​ (ATM​®​) and Functional Integration​®​ (FI​®​). While ATM lessons are facilitated in 
groups, FI hands-on interventions happen on a one-to-one, non-verbal level. ATM lessons are 
led through verbal instruction and questions. Feldenkrais clarifies his use of verbal instruction as 
a mode of facilitating an embodied and ‘ecologized thinking’ (Morin and Kern 1999): 

In my lessons the student learns to listen to the instruction while he is actually 
carrying out an exercise and to make the necessary adjustments without 
stopping the movement itself. In this way he learns to act while he thinks and 
to think while he acts. (1992:60) 

ATM lessons can be understood as detailed educational micro-choreographies. The ATM 
teacher facilitates conditions from which ‘awareness’ can be cultivated through the use of 
compositional devices, disorientation strategies, and de-familiarisation processes. Lessons use 
repetition, theme and variation, rondo forms, reversal, differentiation, and constraint in order to 
stimulate the learner’s curiosity and develop capacity for the questioning of habitual patterns of 
behaviour and thinking. Feldenkrais uses processes of de-patterning and re-patterning of 
habitual movement to construct a self-reflective and creative potential in the mature learner. For 
Feldenkrais, maturity ‘is the capacity of the individual to break up total situations of previous 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 6
 



 

experience into parts, to reform them into a pattern most suitable to the present circumstances’ 
(2005:196).  

Feldenkrais aims to facilitate learning processes through defamiliarisation strategies, first 
theorised by Russian formalist Viktor Shklovski (1893–1984) in his essay ‘Art as Technique’ 
(1917). Shklovski, like Feldenkrais, was concerned with habituation of perception and behaviour 
and saw the main function of art as to challenge habituation: 

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived 
and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 
‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the length and difficulty of 
perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and 
must be prolonged. (Shklovski 1917:12) 

Similarly, Feldenkrais proposes an aesthetic experience to the participant/learner that makes 
use of this ‘making strange’ to heighten sensory-motor awareness and capacities while 
stimulating critical reflection on the organisation and construction of embodied knowledge. 
Feldenkrais states that an important feature of the group work is the continued novelty of 
situation that is maintained throughout the course. ‘Once the novelty wears off, awareness is 
dulled and no learning takes place. If a configuration needs repetition, I teach it in tens and even 
hundreds of variations until they are mastered’ (2010:37). Shelhav (2003) emphasises the 
relevance of compositional aspects of the ATM lessons and suggests that each lesson has a 

logical structure and is like a work of art. It is hoped that the teacher and student 
alike, through the medium of the lesson, will have a sensual-emotional-thoughtful 
experience [...]. The components of the lessons become clear, its hidden layers 
and logical structure become obvious in this way, the logical structure can foster 
logical thinking. (Shelhav and Golomb 2003:ii)  

Within somatic movement practices, the Feldenkrais Method finds a unique signature through 
the combination of application of de-familiarisation devices, logic in compositional structuring of 
lessons, and the use of verbal instruction.  

Functional Integration is an empathetic touch-based dialogue that allows the learner to discover 
new and pleasurable sensory experiences and movement possibilities. Feldenkrais radically 
challenges notions of the isolated individual by proposing that, through touch, boundaries 
between self and other can be both suspended and clarified. He suggests that ‘through touch, 
two persons, the toucher and the touched, can become a new ensemble […] a new entity’ 
(Feldenkrais in Ginsburg 2010:267). Modes of interaction inherent in the Feldenkrais Method 
rely on honing into intersubjective processes of mutual learning through coupling with peers and 
environment, to be understood as ‘dancing together’ (Feldenkrais in Goldfarb 1990).  

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 7
 



 

Transfer and becoming 

The title of this essay refers to choreographic research projects undertaken in 2006 and 2009 as 
part of the ​Body/Soma/Self​  cycle at The Facility: Performance as Research Centre of London 
Metropolitan University. ​Crossing (2006)​ , a collaboration with dance-makers Colin Poole, Lizzie 
Lequesne, and composer Mark Horrocks that aimed to explore strategies of transcending 
pre-expressive educational propositions within the Feldenkrais Method towards highly dynamic, 
impulsive, and visceral performance modes. ​Weave (2009),​  a week of shared 
Feldenkrais-informed choreographic interventions, investigated how psychosocial dimensions of 
the Feldenkrais Method can support decision-making processes within choreographic 
interrogations. This project was designed as an exchange between UK-based Feldenkrais 
practitioners and somatic-informed dance-makers. 

Body/Soma/Self ​ (2004–2009)​ ​ was comprised of a series of choreographic laboratory projects – 
Chaser (2004),​  ​trace/reverse​  ​(2005),​  ​Crossing (2006),​  ​Weave​  ​(2009)​  – which were driven by 
emergent and developmental aims and questions. These projects focussed on studio-based 
practice, debate, peer-exchange, and documentation processes.  The project formed part of my 2

practice-led PhD ‘The Art of Making Choices: The Feldenkrais Method as a Choreographic 
Resource’ (Kampe 2013), which was bookended by two professional productions. ​Urbane 
Rituale​  ​(2003)​ , a site-specific choreographic collaboration with a cast of 150 performers created 
with ​Tanzinitiative Hamburg​  in Germany, and the play ​The Dybbuk ​ (2010), co-directed with 
writer Julia Pascal and presented in New York City, tested the integration of the Feldenkrais 
Method into professional performance-making contexts.  

During the research period of ​Body/Soma/Self,​  the nature of questions asked shifted from 
questions regarding the transfer and development of ​movement​  ​vocabularies ​ (​Chaser​ ) and 
structuring devices​  (​trace/reverse​ ) from Feldenkrais Method to performance-making processes, 
to questions going beyond movement, concerned with ​accesing and enhancing the affective 
capacities of performers​  (​Crossing​ ), and with ​processes that support​  ​capacities for judgement 
and choice-making (Weave)​  within performance-making processes. 

The final project, ​The​  ​Dybbuk,​  was a professional testing ground for further extending and 
manifesting of the results of the research into the Feldenkrais Method as a choreographic 
resource. The development process of the piece involved a three-week period of working with an 
ensemble of actors in daily laboratory-sessions. I also worked in collaboration with co-director 
Julia Pascal on integrating text-based work, movement-based practices, and choreographic 
interactions with objects and set. This co-rehearsal continued for the first week of the run of the 

2 All laboratory projects were undertaken and presented through public performances in collaboration with 
academic and professional partners including (The Facility – the PaR Unit London Metropolitan University, 
The Feldenkrais Guild of Germany, Chisenhale Dance Space London), and conducted with expert somatic 
practitioners and dance-makers as co-researchers, including Feldenkrais, Body-Mind Centering™, and 
Pilates practitioners. 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 8
 



 

project. Drawing on research undertaken in ​Body/Soma/Self​ , the rehearsal process included an 
application of a questioning approach​  allowing for trial and error, even during the run of the play. 
Collaborator Julia Pascal describes the intra- and inter-subjective nature of the questioning that 
emerged within the Feldenkrais-informed rehearsal processes where the embodied and felt 
intelligence of the performer becomes a dynamic resource in the creation process: 

In rehearsal, you are constantly encouraging us to ask questions; you are 
verbalizing all the time—how does this feel? You are synthesizing the 
body-mind by the fact of questioning. ‘Why are you doing this? What do you 
want from this person? What do you want from yourself?’  

Without that you don't have a movement that works, that has any intelligence 
behind it. What is the action and how do I show my inner feeling through 
action? It is always about action, it’s not about thought, but of course thought 
and action are completely connected; what is the physical action, where is it 
coming from? In our rehearsals this seems to be now symbiotically 
connected. (Pascal in conversation with Kampe 2010) 

Facilitating co-creation 

Pascal (2010) suggests that such non-dualist process is an ‘opening […] you are always 
opening; opening new rooms in the house, opening new doors, opening new experiences.’ 
Feldenkrais practices rely on coupling processes where sociality is constructed through the 
interaction of flexible communicative partners. Within such context the role of the choreographer 
is understood predominantly as facilitator of conditions for co-creation​. ​ This includes the 
facilitating​ ​ of conditions for awareness and ‘self-eco-reorganisation’ (Morin 2007) of individual 
performers, allowing for flexibility, openness, and curiosity through movement. It also means a 
facilitating of conditions for the ‘necessary encounter with the unfamiliar’ (Mumford and Garde 
2011) through interactions of ensemble members, with a focus on the generation and 
development of movement material through individual performers and ensemble. The providing 
of time for shared periods of debate and reflection, as developed during laboratory projects, 
strengthened conditions for ‘complicity’ amongst collaborators. Negotiating the role of the 
choreographer as a ‘facilitator of a choreographic environment’ formed part of a learning 
process between participants. Through the development of FM-informed rehearsal modalities, 
the ​facilitating​  and ​social​  ​choreographing ​ of​ ​ such collaborative learning became an integral part 
of the artistic input and output of the choreographic process. 

My research suggests that a transfer of FI touch modalities to interaction of participants through 
improvisation enhances the organic potential for social exchange of sensory insights inherent in 
the Feldenkrais Method as a base for performance making. Research participant Simeon Perlin 
in ​The Dybbuk​  suggested that the transfer of touch interactions into partner work and 
improvisational scores may develop empathy, communication skills, and trust amongst the 
performers, ‘as a platform from which to build, a physical common code’​ ​ (Perlin in conversation 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 9
 



 

with Kampe 2010). Such processes of transfer included an introducing of FI-based touch 
interactions as a mode of non-verbal communication between choreographic facilitator and 
performers, providing sensory stimulation, pattern clarification, and a psycho-physical modality 
of ‘support’ (Rywerant 2001). Perlin commented on the non-corrective quality of 
touch-interaction emerging from Feldenkrais-informed processes: 

You never once pushed me to do something that I’ve not wanted to do. In other 
movement practises I’ve felt hands on me trying to push areas that don’t want 
to be pushed, whereas with this you have the freedom to discover your body in 
a way that is comfortable for you…it’s not forced. (Perlin 2010) 

The choreographic processes also extensively tested modalities of sharing of such touch 
explorations with ensemble/research participants as a mode of dialoguing and transfer into 
movement exploration, fostering a haptic collaboration between performers. The research 
probed the transfer of the listening and guiding quality of hands-on FI modalities into creative 
processes. This transfer explored the shifting of touch interaction from ​hands-on-torso​  touch to 
torso-to-torso​  touch and dialogue as resource for collaborative movement generation. It also 
broadened the dynamics of touch interaction from ‘yielding’ qualities to forceful ‘fighting’ 
qualities, and introduced notions of ‘resistance as choice’ while maintaining a shared 
awareness. 

Dialogic bodies 

This research identifies a dialogic body as resource for performance investigation. While the 
Feldenkrais Method focuses on neuro-muscular-skeletal organisation, the corporeal 
organisation proposed has no fixed centre, but is part of an ecological system that is reflected in 
a ‘functional unity between body, mind, and environment’ (Feldenkrais 2005:149). Such 
de-centralised body places a​ ​ dialogic between awareness and adaptability as its potent core. 
While aiming for free flow in joint articulation and an articulate ‘culture of pelvis and hip joints’ 
(Feldenkrais 2005), Feldenkrais lessons play with the differentiating and varying of 
kinetic-chains to allow for complexity, poly-centricity, and omni-directionality in possible 
movement range. Such differentiating includes a testing, shifting, and reversal of places of 
movement initiation, and the isolation and re-connection of body-areas in relation to a larger 
function. Lessons are distinctly designed to highlight relationships in timing, space, and shaping 
between articulated areas in the mover. This relational testing encourages the learner to 
develop an understanding of the interplay between stability- and mobility-providing corporeal 
organisation in relation to environment and ground. 

Throughout this project, a body-coding emerged that abandons a ​stable core​  for ​core mobility​  in 
the mover, in which potentials for adaptability are seen as a resource for creativity​. ​Batson 
(2008) suggests that dominant Western dance aesthetics privilege ​core stability​  and verticality 
of alignment where the ​axial-skeleton​  is understood as centralising anchor supporting the 
actions of ​distal areas​  of the human body. Feldenkrais challenges this Cartesian model of 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 10 
 



 

alignment by asking the mover to constantly shift place of movement initiation and by offering 
movement explorations where ​joint-order​  relationship of stability and mobility are varied and 
reversed. This ​proximal-distal-reversal​  strategy, embedded in both ATM and FI practices, was 
used extensively during the creation of all projects.  

Dance-maker Adi Lerer (​Weave​  2010) reflects upon the relational aspect of the 
Feldenkrais-informed body-coding as an empowering experience that affected her capacity for 
choice-making: 

The Feldenkrais sessions gave me a strong sense of awareness of the 
relationship of different parts of my body and their connectedness, the restrictive 
flow of everyday habits, and how through the practice I can become aware again 
of the choices I have and my habits. […] I am being reminded of something that is 
already ingrained in us, the placement of different limbs, muscles, joints and 
bones, what they are capable of, which then enabled me to make decisions of 
how to move. If I will move this part or put weight on this part, how will it affect the 
other parts in my body? It was a very liberating experience. (Lerer in Kampe 
2010:50) 

While emerging vocabularies within this project may seem similar to other 20​th​ century 
dance-movement vocabularies, the way the performer is invited into the reflective process of 
‘embodied analysis’ (Kampe 2010) makes the Feldenkrais approach to movement development 
distinct. The dancers’ decision-making processes are an integral part of the dance language. 
Bodies are not understood as texts, but as readers. Performers are not asked to instrumentalise 
their bodies, but are becoming players. While spatiality of movement organisation within 
Feldenkrais lessons is self-referential, it is linked to an intentional relationship between mover 
and environment. Rather than being concerned with theatrical codes of presentation or 
representation, the Feldenkrais Method also privileges a ‘slower ontology that challenges the 
Western capitalized view that prioritizes “more and faster” ideologies’ (Wood 2011), offering a 
limited dynamic and spatial range as a working position. The Feldenkrais Method privileges a 
‘yielding’ or ‘indulging’ dynamic quality by encouraging participants to reduce speed, resistance 
to gravity and force, and scale of movement, while allowing for connectivity with the ground.  3

Such ‘slowing down’ and yielding allows participants to align heightened perception with 
fine-tuned action. Consequently, movers are invited to connect intentionality with action.  

The impact of such psycho-physical connectivity within performance contexts was described by 
research participants as awareness enhancing: 

3 I am using terminology based on Laban, and post-Laban practices such as LMA, Bartenieff 
Fundamentals™, and Body-Mind Centering™ to describe the complexity of dynamic and spatial movement 
organisation. ‘Yielding’ or ‘indulging’ refers here to a non-resistant relationship to the dynamic qualities of 
weight (force), space, time, and flow (Longstaff 2004). Hackney (1998) uses the term ‘yielding’ to articulate 
an active giving into gravity to connect with the ground rather than resisting it.  

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 11 
 



 

The movements are so gentle and bring you back into yourself, but not only 
into yourself, it makes you aware of first of all your center and then you open 
out; and everything is quite gentle, so it’s very specific; no movement is 
gratuitous. So it helps to focus.​ ​ (Dante in conversation with Kampe and Perlin 
2010) 

More so, performers identified a relationship between a heightened proprioception and a 
readiness for action: 

You become aware of parts of your body moving, particularly the feeling or 
the sensations of it. […] You are more active [...] a performer should be active 
at all points. (Karsberg in conversation with Kampe and Sykes 2010)  

Performer Adi Lerer described this emerging readiness for action as empowering to 
choice-making in movement design or performance. She suggests that a psycho-physical 
agency emerging through Feldenkrais processes fosters 

[…] more control of the decisions of how and when to move, and if I move 
this part, what will I project, what will my body say to the audience? (Lerer in 
Kampe 2010:50)  

Actor Simeon Perlin suggested that this dialogic embodied agency can serve as a resource for 
affective action, where​ ​‘movement is impacting emotion […] movement infers emotion’ (Perlin in 
Kampe 2011). 

The choreographic research identifies a synergistic relationship between the omni-directional 
and relational core mobility as prioritized within Feldenkrais practices, the emphasis on free 
flow, slowing down, and lightness as dynamic modes of investigation, and the emerging 
capacity for choice-making, affective presence, and expressivity of performers in rehearsal and 
performance.  

Transfer as extending 

This choreographic research probed practical modes of knowledge-transfer as an extending – 
dynamically, spatially, contextually, and socially – of Feldenkrais Method modalities through 
artistic processing. It acknowledges that the Feldenkrais Method developed as an emergent 
hybrid form from its inception and is never applied in a neutral context; rehearsal participants, 
including myself, inevitably bring their own micro-narratives and needs into a necessarily 
complex and contaminated process. Dance-maker Lerer comments on the effects of the organic 
transfer of Feldenkrais Method to dance-making strategies: 

One session we worked on the eyes. We explored the mental and physical effect 
this work had on the whole body, and we inquired the relationship between what 
we envisaged to what is there in reality. In another session we worked on breath. I 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 12 
 



 

then took those specific elements and decided to work for a while on those 
different aspects in my piece – just being led by my eyes or the breath and what 
does it express. (Lerer in Kampe 2010:50) 

The project identified the following recurring modes of transfer: 

The use of the Feldenkrais Method​ ​as ​preparatory-practice​ , challenging visual perception as 
privileged mode of process engagement through the combination of verbal instruction and 
questioning​ ​ in ATM, and haptic dialogues as found in FI, with eyes-closed reception of process 
participants. The results of such preparatory-practice, organically and un-directed, ‘bled into 
rehearsal and performance’ (Perlin 2010).​ ​Research-participant Rachel VonMoos commented 
on the ​non-linear effect​  of such preparatory practice on the process of dance-making within the 
project ​Weave (2009)​ :  

I felt a strong readiness to enter my own work […] Connecting the morning 
experience with the solo I was making in the afternoon was a very inspiring aspect 
for my creative process. During sessions ideas/images would come up, structures 
for explorations, [...] all these to be ‘used’ in the afternoon. I worked with some of 
the ‘instructions’ as restriction, not achieving the goal (VonMoos in Kampe 
2010:49). 

The extending of ​ the Feldenkrais Method​ – educational modalities​  ​as modes of inquiry 
into rehearsal and performance practice: ​This included the use of ATM and FI as 
Kinaesthetic Tuning Scores​  as direct resource for movement generation. Here, the facilitator 
provided topics/functions investigated through the Feldenkrais Method to be transferred into 
performance investigations. Performers were given time immediately after ATM practice to 
explore modes of enquiry and of emergent, unfamiliar, movement patterns within 
improvisational contexts; minimal verbal intervention allowed for a foregrounding of kinaesthetic 
experience as resource for enquiry. It also entailed the​ ​transfer of modes of ​verbal instruction 
into improvisational and editorial processes, e.g. use of suggestion, imagery, and metaphor, 
reframing, pacing, and modelling, and through the use of questioning.  Such verbal instruction is 4

understood as performative and includes intention and tone of voice of the speaker. Throughout 
all projects an ​instructing through questioning​  was applied as reoccurring strategy. By taking the 
role of questioner, the choreographer facilitates an environment for inquiry and at the same time 
subverts traditional hierarchies within the choreographic process, allowing for not-knowing and 
collaborative processes of ‘finding’. Choreographer and performers become ‘co-enquirers’ 
(Igweonu 2010).​ ​ Actor Simeon Perlin identified ‘a strategy of what if?’ as emerging mode of 
self-questioning within editorial and performance practice: 

4 For a more in-depth discussion on the use of language in the work of Moshe Feldenkrais see Reese 
(1985).  

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 13 
 



 

What happens if I do it as if one arm is lighter than the other, or if I’m terrified and 
my body is tight and constricted, what happens to my voice, what happens to my 
intention? (Perlin in conversation with Kampe and Dante 2010) 

The transfer of ​problem-setting and solving ​ processes into improvisation and movement 
generation included the setting and letting go of ​physical constraints​  to allow for discovery of 
non-habitual movement choices. Dance-maker Karin Fisher-Potisk comments:  

It invites us to find a way around restriction, usually by freeing up another 
part, allowing something else to move or take over […]. This became very 
clear for me, i.e. when placing one hand on the head – the head became a 
much more active limb (Fisher-Potisk in Kampe 2010:48) 

This ‘holding on to the head’ literally blocks the use of the neck, disturbs habitual self-use, and 
thus asks movers to activate their ribs in relation to head movements in unfamiliar ways.  

The use of ​touch interactions​ ,​ as used in FI practice, involves haptic dialogues of listening, 
following, guiding, and manipulation. Like verbal instruction, pacing, modelling, reframing and 
questioning, these dialogues become non-corrective and holographic modalities that can shift 
focus from ‘detailed’ inquiry to ‘global’ whole-body touch dialogues.  

The choreographic subject 

This research suggests​ ​that the movement-led educational practices developed by Moshe 
Feldenkrais are deliberately choreographic . If, for choreographer Michael Klien, choreography 5

itself is proposed as an aesthetics – ‘​a sensitive knowing’​  (2009:99), the facilitation of such 
sensitive knowing, which is at the heart of Feldenkrais’ concerns, must be understood as a 
choreographic process. ‘The Art of Making Choices’​ ​ probed how Feldenkrais provides a 
sophisticated choreographic toolkit for becoming articulate of a non-verbal thinking, through 
processes that combine embodied analysis and verbally-led assisted enquiry. Feldenkrais’ 
quest for an embodied self-education towards ‘mature behaviour’ (2005) of the individual is from 
its outset concerned with a re-education of gravity responses within the adult learner: 

This is the beginning of consciousness; learning to recognize how our bodies 
are oriented we come to know ourselves. Subjective and objective realities 
are thus organically dependent on the motor elements […] which are oriented 
by and react to the gravitational field. (2010:33) 

To foster such getting in touch with how we orient ourselves in relationship to gravity and world, 
Feldenkrais developed a highly structured movement-led practice that provides learners with 

5 Moshe Feldenkrais referred to his lessons as compositions in movement: ‘I have created about ten 
thousand hours and recorded thirty variations in each one. In other words, I have composed more music 
than Beethoven and Bach together.’ (Feldenkrais 2010:88) 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 14 
 



 

‘conditions where they can learn to think. They have to think without words, with images, 
patterns and connections. That sort of thinking always leads to a new way of action’ (2010:88). 
Feldenkrais referred to such non-verbal thinking with images, patterns and connections, inferred 
through movement, as a ‘thinking with the elements of thinking’ (88). Such embodied, patterned, 
imaged, connective, and divergent thinking can be posited as ​choreographic thinking, ​ or as the 
choreographic per se. The Feldenkrais Method thus renders the choreographic as a lived and 
emergent learning process, understood by Klien (2009) as ‘the very source of knowledge’. Klien 
argues, in line with a Feldenkraisian epistemology, that ‘the perception of patterns, relations and 
their dynamics, the integration to existing knowledge, and the creative application to a wider 
reality, all together constitute the choreographic act’ (2009:100).  

The role of the facilitator in the Feldenkrais Method is to provide embodied contexts for ​‘gestural 
“I can’s​ ”’ (Noland 2009), which lead the participant into an emerging choreographic agency. 
Pascal describes this process: 

You often ask ‘how does that feel’? You make the person experience their 
own bodies as if it’s a new coat, and that is very exciting, and makes the 
person realize that they can expand and grow in a way they had not thought 
of before […] That questioning which transmutes into a body change allows 
the person to widen and realize they are capable of much more. (Pascal in 
conversation with Kampe 2010) 

Ideally, the facilitator in the Feldenkrais Method aims to provide conditions that enable 
participants to differentiate and realign relationships between​ cultural efficacy, physiological 
efficiency, and self-efficacy ​ through felt subjective experience (Bandura 1994). Both ATM and FI 
are designed to ask questions through multi-modal movement-based processes, aiming to 
support the awareness of an ​intra-subjective​ , ​inter-subjective​ , and ​trans-subjective​  reflective 
agent-self. Such multi-dimensional agency, understood as in-process, allows the participant to 
make choices from within, regarding: 

● internal psycho-physical self-organisation  

The Feldenkrais sessions gave me a strong sense of awareness of the 
relationship of different parts of my body and their connectedness. (Lerer in 
Kampe 2010:49) 

● relationship towards the environment 

Feldenkrais helped me get a new and special sense of my body and its 
relationship to the world. My work is all about this […] It involves a process of 
going over and over, smudging and exploring and repeating until the precise form 
emerges. And the sources are body and the world. (LeQuesne in Kampe 
2010:50) 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 15 
 



 

● a shared functionality and materiality that goes beyond individual uniqueness  

The Feldenkrais Method gave me a connection to the poetry of 
movement and its pure functionality, which I work with. It interests me 
to be a real person on stage’​ ​ (VonMoss in Kampe 2010:49) 

Relational and environmentally embedded, this enacted questioning regarding a ‘whole self’ 
asked through Feldenkrais Method practices is concerned with: 

What, right now, during or after Feldenkrais Method practice, does it feel like to be 
myself? 

How am I engaging with the world? 

How could I engage differently with world? 

How can I modulate my interaction with the world so that it feels the way I want it to feel? 

The critical subject  

‘I have a problem setting any material today. Some things are beyond reason – I 
only want to explore more’.  6

This research project acknowledges the self-constitutive and critical potential of the Feldenkrais 
Method practices probed within performance-making contexts. It also acknowledges the 
emergent, de-centred, de-stabilised position of the subject within the process. Such respectful 
acknowledgement of the self-in-process is at the heart of the ethos and potential of this project. 
As a choreographer/person, I am not working with abstract movement or complex systems, but 
working as a person, with people – and for people. Such a position acknowledges mutual 
agency-in-process, empathy, desire, communication, vulnerability, and compassion. It enhances 
Klein’s (2011) claim for a ​subject-constitutive potential of dance ​ by transposing Feldenkrais 
Method processes and nature of questions as introduced above into rehearsal and performance 
praxis:  

we move and improvise attuned to ourselves through Feldenkrais Method processes 

we ask questions regarding our ‘whole selves’: 

who are we? 

how are we relating to our environment? 

what do we want? 

6 Dance-maker Alenka Herman, research participant in project ​Weave (2009), ​ cited in Kampe 2010:49. 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 16 
 



 

what do we desire? 

we move 

who are we now, while and after moving? 

who are we now, through moving? 

Feeding questions regarding self-efficacy into rehearsal processes has been a key strategy 
developed throughout this project. Asking Feldenkrais-inspired questions during 
rehearsal-practice has affected ​kinaesthetic-affective feedback loops ​ within the artistic dialogue. 
Choreographer Alenka Herman illuminates her self-questioning: 

I went on a journey [...] I could feel so clearly the difference on two sides of the 
body. Who lives here? This was the question that stayed with me for a long time 
[…] I realised and could feel how emotions, habits and tensions stay in the body, 
how much power they have to transform. There is a lot of work in undoing. 
(Herman in Kampe 2010:49) 

Processes of de-patterning, though introduced through playful questioning as a Feldenkrais 
Method modality and allowing a possibility for re-patterning and re-integration of new knowledge 
into enworlded functions, can, or must, provoke crises of self-image and ‘of knowledge and 
skills’ (Martin 2009). Allowing for ​a space for crisis – ​ a ‘Krisenraum’ (Klein 2011) – and 
ambiguity has been part of the choreographic practice cultivated and fertilized throughout this 
project. In her reflections on her creation process in ​Weave,​  dance-maker Katsura Isobe 
describes a feeling of ‘less fear towards the unknown’ as the effect of working with ATM lessons 
prior to rehearsal. Such fearlessness emerged from a place of confusion and crisis:  

During most of time in ATM sessions, I was struggling. I was struggling to 
understand what the instruction was, to find out how I wanted to move with which 
part of body, and to draw a conclusion from what I experienced. I wanted to make 
sense​. 

I really could not let it go in ATM sessions (which I found easier in FI sessions 
since I was completely passive), but the sessions took me to some mental space 
where I don’t go normally, where I felt calm or almost empty; things were much 
simpler and there were no need of words to explain. A vast open space, it was. 

The Feldenkrais Method definitely encouraged us to listen to our intuition, and that 
was the crucial approach we took for our artistic practice […]. Now and then I ask 
myself a question: what is dance about? What does dance deal with? The 
experience during ​Weave ​ shows me the answer: you can access to a place where 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 17 
 



 

you otherwise don’t access, through the body movement. And this place holds the 
truth. (Isobe in Kampe 2010) 

Complex processes: Dances for a sick world 

The transfer of the Feldenkrais Method into performance-making – ​a process-of-enquiry within a 
process-of-enquiry​ , is understood as a complex system involving a large number of interacting 
agents, allowing for conditions for uncertainty, ambiguity, and emergent non-linear causalities. 
On reflection, my research identifies five areas for transfer within the Feldenkrais Method as 
relevant for informing choreographic research processes: 

‘…Through Movement’​ :​ a privileging of movement, understood as relational, as vehicle for 
knowledge creation, self-awareness, and ‘self-imaging’ (Beringer 2001). 

‘Theory of Reversibility’​ :​ Feldenkrais’ working proposition, that ‘the adherence to one principle 
to the utter exclusion of the opposite is contrary to the laws of life’ (2005:18), allows for an 
embracing of the paradox between different perspectives of the agents of the artistic process – 
choreographer, performers, and spectators. Such ‘first principle of the Feldenkrais Method being 
no principle’ (Hanna 1980), as a position from which to question the given at any time, underpins 
strategies and modes of embodiment inherent in the Feldenkrais Method; it provides a context 
for a subversive methodology of ​embodied questioning​ . 

‘Choreographic Thinking’​ :​ ​ Feldenkrais’ proposition of non-reductionist thinking ‘with images, 
patterns and connections’ (2010:88), constructed through multi-modal teaching processes, can 
serve as tuning processes which invite participants into choreographic micro-inquiry. 

‘Body-Mind-Environment Unity’​ :​ Feldenkrais’ evolutionary stance on a ​whole self​ , challenging 
a humanist centrality of the individual, highlights an inter- and trans-subjective position of the 
living organism and supports notions of collaboration within creative processes. Such organic 
perspective underpinning all Feldenkrais practices fosters what sociologist Cornelius 
Castoriadis coined as ‘the paradox of autonomy’ – the becoming of a relational and 
co-dependent being (Castoriadis 2005:314).  

‘Working With the Person’​ :​ Feldenkrais’ insistence on working with the person, not with bodies 
(2010), and a concern for ‘human dignity’ (1992), places ethical, political, and spiritual 
dimensions into the practice which results in a compassionate, empathetic, and non-corrective 
intersubjective dialogic working mode.  

My research into the transfer of the Feldenkrais Method to choreographic processes has 
resulted in the development of an interrogative ‘open systems’  approach to 7

performance-making. It supports the late dance-facilitator Gill Clarke’s argument that, for 

7 Cillary (2005) refers to ‘open systems’ as ‘systems that live within a constant exchange with their 
environment’​ ​ (Cillary in Birringer and Fenger 2005:121). 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 18 
 



 

dancers as co-creators, somatic competencies such as​ ​ ‘skills of attention, imagination and 
curiosity “thought through” the body become tools as essential for the dancer to develop as their 
physical proficiency’ (Clarke in DeLahunta et al. 2011:249). A key outcome of the project is the 
development of processes that form ​tools for​  ​embodied choreographic questioning, ​ valid for 
performers, choreographers, and theatre directors alike, which allow the performers to work ​as 
co-creators​  ‘with all the power of bodily experience.’   8

The choreographic research discussed in this essay​ ​suggests that the Feldenkrais Method, 
concerned with questioning habitual perception and behaviour, placed within a choreographic 
context, can support a ‘new culture of uncertainty’ (Montuori 2007). It can support an 
open-ended, rigorous, and re-constructive approach to collaborative practice. Feldenkrais’ work 
and his ideas on embodied self-care in the here and now are close to Randy Martin’s ideas on a 
contemporary function of dance as a tool for ‘looking at the re-organisation of now’ (2009). It 
thus offers a model for embodied reconfigurations of a ‘social kinaesthetic’ (Martin 2010) within 
dance-making processes away from vertical- and core-oriented modes of interaction, towards a 
pleasurable, de-centralised – and therefore collaborative – organisation.  

My original PhD project ​The Art of Making Choices: The Feldenkrais Method as a 
Choreographic Resource ​ took inspiration from the title of Modernist choreographer Doris 
Humphrey’s book ​The Art of Making Dances​  (1987). Humphrey’s manual for choreographic 
processes was published at a seminal time of crisis within 20​th​ century dance culture. New 
developing modes of presentation and non-determinism beyond representation left Humphrey 
with uncomfortable conclusions. Emerging late Modernist choreographers were referred to as 
‘abdicating their rights to be people, pretending to be objects in space’, leading her to a linear 
aesthetic logic that ‘a sick world will produce a sick art’ (1987:171). Perhaps a choreographic 
practice that cultivates a non-verbal thinking, facilitated in an empathetic inter-personal and 
co-creational quest for ‘human dignity’ (Feldenkrais 2010:68), allowing for questioning the given, 
as a ‘true rationality [that] is not merely critical, but self-critical’,​ ​ can produce much-needed 
dances for a sick world (Morin 1999:129). Such dance or choreographic practice might well be 
found outside traditional stage settings, within trans-disciplinary contexts and processes that 
realign the artistic with the everyday through images, patterns, and connections – a shared 
embodied learning, as facilitated through somatic-informed choreographic processes.  

References 

Bandura, A. (1994) ‘Self-efficacy’. In ​Encyclopedia of Human Behavior​  (vol. 4). ed. by 
Ramachaudran, V.S., 71–81. New York: Academic Press 

Batson, G. (2008) ‘Teaching Alignment’​. ​ In ​The Body Eclectic – Evolving Practices in Dance 
Training.​  ed. by Bales, M. and Nettl-Fiol, R. Illinois: University of Illinois Press 

8 Review of performance project (Molofsky 2016). 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 19 
 



 

Beringer, E. (2001) ‘Self-imaging’. ​The Feldenkrais Journal 13​ , 33–38 

Birringer, J. and Fenger, J. (2005) ​Tanz im Kopf / Dance and Cognition​ . Bielefeld: Lit Verlag 

Brown, N. G. (2011) ‘Disorientation and Emergent Subjectivity: The Political Potentiality of 
Embodied Encounter’. ​Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 3​  (1+2), 61–73. doi: 
10.1386/jdsp.3.1-2.61_1 

Castoriadis, C. (2011) ​Postscript on Insignificance: Dialogues with Cornelius Castoriadis. 
London: Continuum 

Castoriadis, C. (2005) ​Figures of the Thinkable ​ [digital book]. available from < 
http://www.notbored.org/FTPK.pdf​ > (accessed July 6, 2016) 

Claid, E. (2006) ​Yes? No! Maybe…Seductive Ambiguity in Dance​ . Oxford:​ ​ Routledge 

DeLahunta, S., Clarke, G., and Barnard, P. (2011) ‘A Conversation About Choreographic 
Thinking Tools’​.​  ​Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, ​ 3 (1 + 2), 243–259. doi: 
10.1386/jdsp.3.1-2.243_1 

Doidge, N. (2015) ​The Brain’s Way of Healing​ . London: Penguin 

Feldenkrais, M. (1977) ​The Case of Nora​ . New York: Harper and Row 

Feldenkrais, M. (1980) ​The Elusive Obvious​ . New York: Harper and Row 

Feldenkrais, M. (1981/2001) ​Feldenkrais Professional Training Program Transcript, Amherst, 
Massachusetts​ . Paris: International Feldenkrais Federation 

Feldenkrais, M. (1992) ​Awareness Through Movement: Health Exercises for Personal Growth 
(2​nd​ ed). New York: Harper and Collins  

Feldenkrais, M. (2002) ​The Potent Self ​ (2​nd​ ed). Berkeley: Somatic Resources 

Feldenkrais, M. (2005) ​Body and Mature Behaviour: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation and 
Learning ​ (2​nd​ ed). Madison: International Universities Press 

Feldenkrais, M. (2010) ​Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais.​  ed. by 
Beringer, E. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books 

Fortin, S., Vieyra, A., and Tremblay, M. (2009) ‘The Experience of Discourses in Dance and 
Somatics’. ​Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices​  ​1​  (1), 47–64. doi: 
10.1386/jdsp.1.1.47/1 

Fortin, S., Long, W., and Lord, M. (2002) ‘Three Voices: Researching How Somatic Education 
Informs Contemporary Dance Technique Classes’. ​Research in Dance Education​  ​3​  (2), 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 20 
 

http://www.notbored.org/FTPK.pdf


 

155–179 

Ginsburg, C. (2010) ​The Intelligence of Moving Bodies: A Somatic View of Life and Its 
Consequences​ . Albuquerque: AWAREing Press  

Goldfarb, L. W. (1990) ​Articulating Changes: Preliminary Notes to a Theory for Feldenkrais​ . 
Berkeley: Feldenkrais Resources 

Green, J. (2001) ‘Socially Constructed Bodies in American Dance Classrooms’. ​Research in 
Dance Education 2​  (2), 155–173 

Hackney, P. (1998) ​Making Connections: Total Body Integration Through Bartenieff 
Fundamentals​ . London: Routledge 

Hanna, T. (1980) ​The Body of Life​ . New York: Alfred A. Knopf 

Hanna, T. (1985) ​Bodies in Revolt: A Primer in Somatic Thinking​ . Novato, CA: Freeperson 
Press 

Hewitt, A. (2005) ​Social Choreography: Ideology as Performance in Dance and Everyday 
Movement. ​ Durham:​ ​ Duke University Press 

Humphrey, D. (1987) ​The Art of Making Dances ​ (2​nd​ ed)​. ​ Princeton: Dance Horizons 

International Feldenkrais Federation (IFF) (1994) ​Standards of Practice​ . available from < 
http://feldenkrais-method.org/iff/standards-of-practice/​ ​>​ ​(accessed July 4, 2016) 

Igweonu, K. (2010)​ Feldenkrais Method​ ®​  in Performer Training. ​ Swansea: Centre for Innovative 
Performance Practice and Research​ ​ (CiPPR) 

Kampe, T. (2010)​ ​ ‘Weave: The Feldenkrais Method as Choreographic Process’. ​Perfformio 1​  (2) 
(Spring 2010), 34–52 

Kampe, T. (2011) ‘Recreating Histories: Transdisciplinarity and Transcultural Perspectives on 
Performance Making’. ​The Korean Journal for Dance 2011​ , ​67​  (6), 253–274 

Kampe, T. (2013) ​The Art of Making Choices: The Feldenkrais Method as a Choreographic 
Resource​  [PhD documentation]. London Metropolitan University [unpublished] 

Kampe, T. (2014) ‘Moving after Auschwitz: The Feldenkrais Method as a Soma-Critique’.​ The 
Journal of Dance Society for Documentation and History 33​  (6), 237–258 

Klien, M. (2009)​ Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change​ . University of Edinburgh. 
[Unpublished PhD thesis] 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 21 
 

http://feldenkrais-method.org/iff/standards-of-practice/
http://feldenkrais-method.org/iff/standards-of-practice/
http://feldenkrais-method.org/iff/standards-of-practice/


 

Klein, G. (2011)​ ‘​Künstlerisches Arbeiten im Postkapitalismus’.​ Surviving Dance Symposium, 
Choreographisches Zentrum K3, Hamburg, Germany [Unpublished Paper 20/05/11] 

 
Klein, G. and Noeth, S. (eds.) (2011) ​Emerging Bodies: The Performance of Worldmaking in 

Dance and Choreography. ​ Bielefeld [Transcript] 
 
Longstaff, J.S. (2004) ​Effort Elements, Factors, States, & Drives​ . available from < 

http://www.laban-analyses.org/laban_analysis_reviews/laban_analysis_notation/effort_d
ynamics_eukinetics/index.htm​ > (accessed July 6, 2016) 

Marcuse, H. (2007) ​Art and Liberation – Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, ​ Oxford, UK: 
Routledge 

Martin, R. (1998) ​Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and Politics​ . Durham: Duke 
University Press 

Martin, R. (2009) ​Between Utopia and Intervention​ . Talk, November 8, 2009, ​Tanzkongress 
Deutschland​ : Hamburg [unpublished] 

Martin, R. (2010) ‘Toward a Decentered Social Kinesthetic’​.​  ​Dance Research Journal​  ​42​ , 
77–80. doi: 10.1017/S0149767700000851 

Maturana, H.R. and Varela, F. (1975) ​Autopoietic Systems​ . Biological Computer Laboratory, 
Report No. 9.4. Urbana: University of Illinois 

Maturana, H.R. and Varela, F. (1980) ​Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living​ . 
Boston: D. Reidel Publishing 

Melrose, S. (2008) Bodies of Thought [unpublished talk]. Independent Dance, London 

Merzenich, M. (2013)​ Dr. Michael Merzenich on Neuroscience, Learning and the Feldenkrais 
Method. ​ Feldenkrais Guild of North America [online video]. available from < 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rupZ-wlRdA0​ > (accessed July 6, 2016) 

Molofsky, M. (2016) ​Review of “The Dybbuk”, A Play Written and Directed by Julia Pascal, A 
Production of Pascal Theater Company, London​  [blog post]. available from < 
http://www.merlemolofsky.com/dybbuk-review​ > (accessed July 14, 2016) 

 
Monni, K. (2010) ​Dancing as an Embodied Thinking of One’s Cultural and Political Heritage​ . Ula 

Sickle [webpage]. available from < 
http://ulasickle.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/kirsi-monnis-montreal-lecture.html​ > (accessed 
July 6, 2016) 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 22 
 

http://www.laban-analyses.org/laban_analysis_reviews/laban_analysis_notation/effort_dynamics_eukinetics/index.htm
http://www.laban-analyses.org/laban_analysis_reviews/laban_analysis_notation/effort_dynamics_eukinetics/index.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rupZ-wlRdA0
http://www.merlemolofsky.com/dybbuk-review
http://ulasickle.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/kirsi-monnis-montreal-lecture.html


 

 
Montuori, A. (2007) ​Foreword ​ to Morin, E. ​On Complexity​ . Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press 

Montuori, A. (2011) ‘Beyond Postnormal Times: The Future of Creativity and the Creativity of 
the Future’.​ Futures: Journal of Policy, Planning and Future Studies 43​ , 221–227 

Montuori, A. and Purser, R. (1995) ‘Deconstructing the Lone Genius Myth: Towards a 
Contextual View of Creativity’​. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 35​  (3), 69–112 

Morin, E. (2007) ​On Complexity​ . Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press 

Morin, E. and Kern, B. (1999) ​Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium.​  Cresskill, 
NJ: Hampton Press 

Münker, K. (2010) ‘A Continuous Experiment and a Continuous Finding: A Reflection on 
Choreography, Somatic Practice and the Aesthetics of Change and Conditions, Written 
from Practice’. ​Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 2​  (2), 163–176 

Mumford, M. and Garde, U. (2011) ​Post-dramatic ‘Reality Theatre’. ​ Lecture at Conference on 
Postdramatic Theatre as/or Political Theatre, IGRS, UL London [unpublished] 

Noë, A. (2004) ​Action in Perception​ . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 

Noë, A. (2009) ​Out of our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the 
Biology of Consciousness​ . New York: Hill and Wang 

Noë, A. (2009a) ​Bringing the World (in Dance) into Focus​ . Talk, November 8, 2009, 
Tanzkongress Deutschland​ : Hamburg [unpublished] 

Noland, C. (2009) ​Agency and Embodiment: Performing Gestures/Producing Culture​ . 
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 

O’Donnell, M. (2010) ​MOD: Open Form to Responsible Anarchy: Autobiographical Thoughts​ . 
available from < 
http://appleaday.nl/releasedance/ReleaseDance/pdf/MODhistory%20of%20ideas.pdf​ > 
(accessed June 20, 2014) 

O’Donnell, M. (2010a) ​Releasedance, Chapter 1-5​  [online book]. available from < 
http://appleaday.nl/releasedance/ReleaseDance/pdf/chap5.pdf​ > (accessed May 7, 
2016) 

O’Donnell, M. (n.d.) ​Releasedance​  [online]. available from < ​http://www.releasedance.com​ > 
(accessed June 20, 2014) 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 23 
 

http://appleaday.nl/releasedance/ReleaseDance/pdf/MODhistory%20of%20ideas.pdf
http://appleaday.nl/releasedance/ReleaseDance/pdf/chap5.pdf
http://www.releasedance.com/


 

Reese, M. (1985) ‘Moshe Feldenkrais’ Work with Movement: A Parallel Approach to Milton 
Erickson’s Hypnotherapy’. ​Ericksonian Psychotherapy ​ (vol. 1). New York: Brunner and 
Mazel 

Rywerant, Y. (2001) ​Acquiring the Feldenkrais Profession. ​ Tel Aviv: El Or 

Shelhav, C. and Golomb, D. (2003)​ A Guide to Awareness Through Movement: 18 Lessons 
Based on the Feldenkrais Method. ​ Tel Aviv: Shelhav Institute 

Shklovsky, V. (1917) ‘Art as Technique’. In (1965) ​Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays.​  ed. 
by Lemon, T. and Reiss, M., 3​–​ 24. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 

Varela, F. (1995) ‘Large Scale Integration in the Nervous System and Embodied Experience’​. 
Report – 1​ st​  European Feldenkrais Conference, ​ 12​–​ 14. Paris: International Feldenkrais 
Federation (IFF) 

Varela, F. (1996) ‘Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem’. 
Journal of Consciousness Studies 3 ​ (4): ​Special Issues on the Hard Problems​ , 330​–​ 349 

Varela, F., Thompson E., and Rosch E. (1991) ​The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and 
Human Experience​ . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 

Wood, B. (2011) ‘Coming to Our Senses: Perceptual Performance and Fields Intensities’. 
Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices 3​  (1 + 2), 85​–​ 99. doi: 10.1386/jdsp.3.1-2.85_1 

Ziemer, G. (2013) ​Komplizenschaft. Neue Perspektiven auf Kollektivität​  . Bielefeld:Transcript 

Interviews 

Dante, J. In conversation with Kampe, T. and Perlin, S., November 8, 2010 

Karsberg, S. In conversation with Kampe, T. and Sykes, K., October 8, 2010 

Pascal, J. In conversation with Kampe, T., August 8, 2010 

Perlin, S. In conversation with Kampe, T. and Dante, J., November 8, 2010 

Sykes, K. In conversation with Kampe, T. and Karsberg, S., October 8, 2010 

Poole, C. (2005) In interview with trace/reverse cast [DVD].​ ​ The Facility: Research Centre for 
Performance as Research 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 24 
 



 

Biography 

Thomas Kampe​ ​ has worked with dance, theatre and movement for the last 30 years as 
performer, choreographer, director and educator. He has taught somatic approaches towards 
movement education and creative practice in different settings around the world. Throughout his 
career he has coordinated international transdisciplinary initiatives that bridge performing arts, 
health and education. He currently works at Bath Spa University as Senior Lecturer in Acting 
Studies. Thomas trained as a visual artist in Kassel, Germany and studied dance at the Laban 
Centre and at Middlesex University in London where he worked for 13 years with Austrian 
Ausdruckstanz pioneer and Holocaust survivor Hilde Holger (1905–2011). International artistic 
collaborations have included artists Liz Aggiss, Laura Belem, Carol Brown, Hilde Holger, 
Rosemary Lee, Julia Pascal, Colin Poole, German media-arts company ‘Blackhole-Factory’, 
Tanzinitiative Hamburg and Proforma Dresden. He is a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method​® 
which forms a foundation for his teaching, research and artistic practice. His most recent 
publications on Somatics and criticality include the chapter ‘The Art of Making Choices: The 
Feldenkrais Method as a Soma-Critique’ (Triarchy Press 2015), and ‘Eros and Inquiry – The 
Feldenkrais Method as a Complex Resource’ (​Theater Dance and Performance Training ​ 2015). 
Thomas is currently co-editing journal volumes for ​Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices​  and 
the International Feldenkrais Federation (IFF) ​Feldenkrais Research Journal​ . 

 
Kampe • ​Feldenkrais Research Journal, volume 5​  (2016) 25 
 


